7:08 ST
15.2 avg
Something happened this morning that has never happened in 11 years and almost 28,000 miles on the tandem: I woke up and was afraid to get on the bike.
Obviously, yesterday's incident affected me more than I had thought. I had gone to bed last night pretty "tight", on the edge of a meltdown. But, giving it to the Lord allowed me to relax and sleep.
Then, this morning, I found my stomach in knots as we prepared to leave. We prayed and took off at 6:45.
We headed west on hwy 51 which is a four lane with nice wide shoulders. We had decided last night to take this route, instead of straight north, even though it would be longer, because the roads are better.
The first positive was the wide shoulder. The second positive was that it was flatter than what we've been riding. But then, we knew it would be after checking flattestroute.com, a site we found a few days ago.
About nine miles out we turned north on hwy 86. Even though this road has no shoulder, it has VERY little traffic. A few miles up the road, guess what disappeared??!
Look closely..... do you see it?!
No, you don't because they're not there!!! The hills! Gone!! Oh, hallelujah!
And what else don't you see in the top picture? Cars and trucks! In fact, we counted only 15 cars in the next 12 miles to Perry. It's like we woke up in a different world. Oh, thank you, Lord!
There was one short 7% hill just before Perry but we had no problem with that. We took our first break in town in front of the county courthouse. They had these cool benches.
The miles just slid away under our tires with the southeast breeze at our back (which we knew was going to work against us later when we turned east.) It was absolutely opposite of what we've been experiencing for two weeks and actually reminded us of why we love to ride.
Some miles before Tonkawa we were detoured three miles farther to the west because of a bridge being out. The detour put us on I-35 for about 11 miles. The positive: wide shoulder and we cruised along at between 18-20 mph. The negative: noise. I-35 is a north-south truck corridor.
We popped back to hwy 77 at Tonkawa and continued to fly along up to Blackwell. At Tonkawa we saw our first cornfield (of many to come, I'm sure); the corn is already shoulder high here. We also saw grain fields.
(SEE how flat it is?)
We realized at lunch in Blackwell that we would be over 100 miles by the time we reached Arkansas City, with the last 20 of those into the wind. What do you do? You just suck it up and go for it.
A few miles later!
At South Haven we made our turn east - into the wind, as expected. I'm not going to say that it wasn't tough, because it was. We had to make several stops to drink and catch our breath, but we finally got to Arkansas City about 4:00. (I was reading that it's pronounced "Ar-KANsas" like Kansas, not like the state of Arkansas.) Oh yes, we got run off the road again (into a parking lot) by a semi just as we were coming into town.
I guess the long day was a little more than Bob could handle. His flag was too pooped to stand up anymore.
This is an indication of how much we sweated today. That white line on my shorts is salt.
Oh, the other thing that was different today is that we had clear blue skies and sunshine all day long. (It was 87 degrees when we got here.) I kept wondering when the forecasted clouds would arrive. They did this evening and the thunderstorms will hit after midnight.
We didn't really want to take another day off so soon but with the rain tomorrow, we thought it would be a good time to have my ears checked. There's no urgent care facility here so I have an appointment at a clinic in the morning.
We are feeling the 108 miles tonight but are so grateful to God for the good, safe day of riding.
My favorite names for today:
"Stink Creek" and "Tooth Acres" (a farm)
We also saw a couple of signs today that gave us a chuckle. Outside of Stillwater: "Best pork butt in Payne County" and in Braman, a tiny little town: "Neighborhood Watch. We will call the sheriff."
Good night,
P@
Oh, did I mention that it was FLAT today? ;o)
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